The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [88]
“After we restore some semblance of normal life for the people,” Zod said sternly. “We all have work to do.” He turned to Jor-El. “In years past you brought such intriguing inventions to my Commission, but the shortsighted Council forced me to seize them from you. Now it is time to revisit those old plans.”
Jor-El couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “Your Commission destroyed most of my best work.”
“I have great faith in your abilities. I give you full permission—in fact my most enthusiastic encouragement—to work without restrictions or inhibitions. Is that not what you always wanted?”
Jor-El wondered if Zod finally understood how deeply the Commission had hurt him over the years. Again and again, the man had capriciously declared Jor-El’s greatest ideas to be unacceptable or dangerous. To expend so much effort and see it all wasted would have shattered a lesser man, yet even with his confidence undermined, he had continued to work, to invent, and to achieve breakthroughs.
Now the ground rules had changed, though, and the Commissioner needed more from him.
“Do what you were born to do. The whole planet is counting on you.”
Jor-El realized he had been waiting all his life to hear those words.
CHAPTER 36
Even as the people of Argo City pulled together to recover from their own disaster, the loss of Kandor struck Zor-El with great dread. “Our world is in danger,” he told Alura. They stood together in his observation tower, looking out at the deceptively calm sea. “Volcanic eruptions, quakes, giant waves, the buildup in the core—and now an alien attack. There’s got to be something more I can do.”
Alura was levelheaded and matter-of-fact. “Commissioner Zod is directing the Kandor volunteers and refugees well enough. You need to keep doing the same thing here. Argo City is your city. Rally and reassure them.”
Zor-El wished he could send more assistance up to Kandor to help his brother, but he was barely able to cope with his own disaster. All along the coast, the massive rebuilding efforts continued. Since the tsunami had smashed the piers and battered the seawall, the people of Argo City had labored with remarkable solidarity. Rescue teams scouring the long shoreline had found only a few survivors among the hundreds of dead. Funerals were held day after day; Zor-El had personally spoken at forty of the ser vices. During their mourning, however, the citizens also grew more determined.
Medical centers were overflowing; several of the city’s power generators and water-purification plants remained damaged. A few main piers were repaired first so that boats could be launched again, and fishermen worked overtime to bring in aquatic harvests. When they produced more than enough for their own needs, they rushed extra supplies to the refugees at the crater of Kandor. It was the only aid they could offer.
Although Zor-El had been too overwhelmed to attend his brother’s recent wedding, at least he knew Jor-El was married, no longer facing a trial, and assisting Commissioner Zod—all of which was comforting news. Krypton couldn’t ask for a greater help.
In the meantime, construction crews reinforced and raised Argo City’s seawall, after which Zor-El took the extra step of augmenting it with a greatly expanded protective field, based on the one that he had designed for his diamondfish probes. Unless something fundamental was done to relieve the pressure in the planet’s core, though, more quakes would strike, further tsunamis would batter the coast, and restless volcanoes would continue to erupt.
Amid all the turmoil, Zor-El had finally dispatched a new survey team to the southern continent. Soon he would have all the evidence he needed…but instead of a useless, stagnant central government, Krypton had no government at all. With Kandor gone and Argo City brought to its knees, Zor-El didn’t know how anyone could manage a project of such magnitude.
More swiftly than anyone could have expected,